Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines, heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

Frank Curzio: How’s it’s going out there? It’s April, 14th. I’m Frank Curzio, host of Wall Street Unplugged podcast, where I break down the headlines and… Tell you what’s really moving these markets.

Frank Curzio: What a day. Huge, huge day. One of the biggest in the history of crypto. Coinbase is launching its IPO, top story. It’s priced at $2.50. The expected price is $3.40 of what it’s going to come out. When you’re listening to this, it will have opened, and you’ll see a much better price. I’m doing this at 11:00 AM. You guys are probably going to listen to this around 6:00, 7:00 PM, most of you, based on my statistics that we look at, but at $3.40, that price is around a $75 billion valuation. Okay? So, that’s the indication right now. I’m getting $3.40. I have everything on. If it does actually start trading, I will let you know during this podcast.

Frank Curzio: Now, Coinbase is the premier crypto company in the United States. Key there, is in the United States, because we look at the US… I mean, really, really, really late to this party. I’m talking about in terms of compliance, which will help adoption, creates innovation, not to mention the tax revenue you’re going to generate from a two trillion dollar plus market, if you regulate it properly.

Frank Curzio: But I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve come across that I spoke to personally in crypto, especially security tokens, that are launching and having their base overseas, because in the US, it’s just such a grey area.

Frank Curzio: If they do come down heavily on regulating on certain things, they could shut down their business. Said, “Hey, we’ll open operations overseas and we’ll try to do a little bit of business in the US. I’m going to try to avoid it a little bit.” But the US has been late to the party. Really late. Every country is kicking our ass, even China. China’s like, “All right. We’re starting our own cryptocurrency. The yuan.”

Frank Curzio: That’s going to be interesting. Of course, they want to compete with the dollar. Maybe it does, not any time soon, but that’s the goal there. But is the US just going to sit on their hands and do nothing? I don’t know. But this changes it, right?

Frank Curzio: Coinbase coming out, US company, regulated. In the meantime, looking at Binance, Kraken, tons of global crypto exchanges, and even lots of crypto companies that trade on these exchanges have soared, absolutely soared in value. When I say soared, I’m not talking about… Some of you think 100% gain, or a 3X gain, a 5X gain, or even 10X returns, which are the returns you should expect if you are taking on a considerable amount of risk. This is what I’ve done for most of my career. It comes to small caps. You always want to make sure that reward is worth the risk that you’re taking. That risk could be all your money, if you’re willing to lose that money for massive returns.

Frank Curzio: But these gains in cryptos, just over the past 12 months, and some of these things are up 15X, 20X, even 30X plus. Every investor should be willing to lose 100% of your investment if your potential gains are 20X plus over the next 12 months. I mean, you invest in biotech, you invest in junior miners, your returns are probably not 20X, or expectations of 20X. You’re like, “Hey, if I can get 3X times my money, that’s great.” Imagine there was a shot that you could make more than that, which is happening in crypto. That’s why it’s frustrating for the US, because outside of Coinbase, and whatever 50 pairs they have or trading or whatever, a lot of really good cryptos are surging in value, which some US investors don’t have access to. Most of them don’t.

Frank Curzio: Now, when I say putting 100% or losing 100% of your investment to get those gains, I’m not telling every retired investor out there, “Throw your whole 401K into Dogecoin,” whatever. That’s not what I’m saying. But every investor should have a little money that they speculate on, to where if you lose it, it’s not a big deal. But if you hit, those gains could be life-changing.

Frank Curzio: That’s what you do when you go to a casino anyway. You got to expect to lose a hundred, 200, 500,000. Whatever you’re going there to lose. If you hit, you want to hit absolutely big. That’s why people play the lotto, and we know the odds on that. These odds are much better. If you get a 30X return in, say, whatever a large investment is to you out there, if it’s $500, $100, maybe it’s five grand, 10 grand, maybe it’s a million, whatever… Everybody’s different. But say, if you invest five grand with the opportunity to get 30X returns, if you’re right and you nail it, that’s $150,000.

Frank Curzio: That’s the thing. If you hit or if you don’t hit, okay, you lose that portion of your money. But if you do hit, it could result life-changing gains. That’s the goal. Cryptos provide that right now. Maybe that will change, but it’s red hot. Lots more institutions getting in, everybody going crazy. But I look at the US, they’re so behind on this trend.

Frank Curzio: But now Coinbase is public. It means they’re SEC, FINRA regulated, done everything by the book. This is going to lead to more innovation, more security token exchanges opening, which right away, for small companies like ours, like we did with our CEO token to raise money from investors, because one of the biggest incentives is being able to trade these shares just 12 months later. I mean, even sooner under regulatory laws. This is a big deal. Just the beginning.

Frank Curzio: But when I look at the Coinbase IPO and the timing of this, a lot of stuff, I’m going to say, you’re not going to hear anyplace else. Okay? This is the industry I’m in. And yes, CNBC is covering it like crazy. Everybody’s covering it. I’m not going to repeat exactly what you could watch on TV. That’s not why you listen to that shit. It’s the real story, behind the scenes and numbers. I’m going to break down a few things for you today. It’s going to be really fun when it comes to this Coinbase IPO. Because when you look at it and the timing of this, these guys have gotten, so… I’m going to use a word from the New York that maybe you guys aren’t… So ‘asse.’ So, we use the word asse when someone gets extremely lucky. Man, I got so asse, extremely, extremely lucky when it comes to the timing of this IPO.

Frank Curzio: Now why is that? If you look at Coinbase, they first announced a potential IPO and talked about it. And this was in May 2017, going to late 2017, when Bitcoin topped 19,000. New high, everyone going crazy. It was awesome. I think Ethereum was 1200 then, 1300; which it fell to, whatever, a hundred. Bitcoin crashed after that. But when the market was hot in 2017, that’s when they put this idea into motion, and they started talking to the regulators. How do we have to do this? We could operate as a regular broker-dealer capable of offering blockchain-based securities on that platform, under the oversight of the SEC and FINRA.

Frank Curzio: Now, to do this, they needed those proper licenses. And instead of filing for them, which could take years, and I know it takes years, because some of these companies that I know just received these licenses to open up security token exchanges, or alternative trading platforms, we call them. It could take years. A very, very long time. So, Coinbase had the right advisors.

Frank Curzio: You know what they did? They acquired three companies at the exact same time, Keystone Capital, Venovate Marketplace, and Digital Wealth. And these companies provide Coinbase with a Broker-Dealer License and alternative Trading System License. And a Charter Trading platform is, that’s tZERO, is a turn of trading, the not exchange and a Registered Investment Advisor License. And they got all these.

Frank Curzio: When? That was in June 2018. So, the writing was on the wall in terms of Coinbase looking to do an IPO. It was just a matter of when they were going to do it.. When would be the best timing.

Frank Curzio: They also created a tax center, which you see on every major online brokerage firm where you could.. Whatever, capital gains,1099s, everything, right? You just go there. You can get all your tax… They created that as well, which is important. Important steps, so the IRS can get US dollars. You could try Bitcoin since… Yeah, there is a black market for Bitcoin in other countries.

Frank Curzio: A few ways you can transfer money in and out of a country very, very easily. Something you can’t do with gold and take all your gold on a plane with you. Not saying that gold is bad. I’m invested in gold. Just bring up a point here. They also shed lots of accounts, got rid of some of their accounts that were not KYC, AML compliant. So know your customer, anti-laundering.

Frank Curzio: They do these checks when you open up a bank account, when you have a brokerage firm. I mean, if you have a warrant for your arrest for something, and you open a brokerage account, they’re going to be knocking on your door. You got to provide your address and everything. They do this, they just don’t say it, but you have to really say it right now in crypto, because you want to make sure we’re checking off, all those boxes. And that everybody’s money’s safe.

Frank Curzio: When they first opened, there was some accounts that couldn’t be verified and they’re like, “Okay, we got rid of them.” Why? Because they were working with the SEC and this is what they said you needed to do to go public. Good for them. Can’t do all this, an effort to go public, the IPO.

Frank Curzio: So, in June, 2018, Bitcoin fell to 7,000. That was down for 19,000 in late 2017.. Pulled back, pretty sharply. But then by December, 2018, it got even worse. Went to 3000, 3000 in change, from 19,000 to 3000 in less than a year, is an insane, insane move for entire market.

Frank Curzio: And the crypto market remained super depressed for pretty much all of 2018, which would have made it nuts to come out. It’s like launching Uranium company right after Fukushima, not a good idea. Took what? When did that happen? 2010, I think? It took 12 years, finally, Uranium is doing well, and you’re in price of 120, where are they now? 30 still? Still low. Most can’t produce below 50. We see these random people investing in Uranium, very heavily invested in Uranium that held for a long time, doing very, very well, great market, but just bring up a point here, comparing it.

Frank Curzio: So, now looking at a market in 2018, that was terrible. So, what did Coinbase do? They stopped publishing their financials. Instead of Binance, by the way, they were publishing, “Wow we’re great! Look, how much we’re growing. This is awesome!” Then things were like, nah, they just started… They didn’t have to, right? Because they were in public.

Frank Curzio: Then, they were like, maybe this IPO thing might be just a pipe dream, who knows? But by mid-2019, Bitcoin started coming back again. It surged to 11,000, very nice move, considering the lowest was 3000 in 2018. But this move turned out to be a little bit of a head fake because Bitcoin crashed another 50% to 6,500. And this is around May 2020. Stick with me with the timelines, there’s a reason why I’m giving it, but from May 2020, the crypto market started to surge again.

Frank Curzio: This was brought on by the birth of DeFi, Decentralized Finance, a major trend within crypto, which created a new buzz around crypto sending lots of individual names within this trend, absolutely sorry, 20X, 30X, 40X. I mean things that were trading at like 15 cents or 10 cents. We’re trading at seven, eight dollars. Unbelievable move when you look at some of these, these DeFi companies. And rightly so, it is a pretty amazing trend. That’s what you need.

Frank Curzio: So now, you’ve seen the market start to come back and Coinbase says, “Hey, you know, we’re getting excited again.” Because they already had the proper licenses. They did all the work in 2018, 2019, they were SEC compliant, had the right lawyers in place, the right people in place. And of course, now, they have the market in place, which is the most important thing. That’s when you want to launch an IPO. Right now, you want to launch an IPO no matter what, because the market’s at all-time highs and people are throwing money into anything. That’s why you see crazy specs that don’t make sense. Companies that were being valued at say 300 million, three weeks before, spec comes in, saying we’re merging with it and evaluation is like 1.2 billion in three weeks. They should make it 10 billion. They’re going to make it 80 billion if demand is there for people to buy it.

Frank Curzio: They’re going to make more money. They’re going to be out of these things in four months. That’s the goal for a lot of these companies, not Coinbase, but just a lot of these investors have specs, but you need the market and the market is right there, overall market, but also the crypto market started going nuts.

Frank Curzio: So now, by December 2020, Bitcoin, it’s a new high. It surged is over 20,000, or 22,000. So, crypto markets, total, total market cap, how about around $700 billion. The whole market cap of all cryptos. And Coinbase said, okay, now’s the time. These are strong markets to file this IPO with the SEC in December.

Frank Curzio: Now, here’s why it’s better to be lucky than good, by the way, Coinbase is a great company, but the luck here is amazing. Because they filed in December, Coinbase would being valued at $25 billion. This was based on having 35 million users, $25 billion in assets and $320 billion in trading volume. Stay with me. I’m going to repeat those numbers.

Frank Curzio: Now remember, those numbers I just gave you, that was in December. That was just four months ago. So, the whole market’s 700 billion, Bitcoin was around 22,000 and I just told you, 35 million users, 25 billion assets, the range of 20 billion in trading volume. When it filed, then Bitcoin went absolutely insane. But the end of January, it doubled to 40,000, in February it went to 50,000, in March, it went to 60,000 and now today it hit 64,000, a brand new high. The total market cap of cryptos went from 700 billion to 2.3 trillion. This is inside of four months, 200% plus growth in an entire market.

Frank Curzio: So, what does Coinbase do? Well, they get the filing date a couple of weeks, which is April, 14th, which is today, and it’s coming out IPO. But two weeks ago, Coinbase did something interesting. They released its quarterly results. Kind of weird since this is a private company. I mean, you’d just have to dig through the F1s or whatever, to go through the financials that I don’t know.

Frank Curzio: Coinbase said, “Look what we did this quarter” in Q1. You don’t see that from private companies before the IP’s, you have to dig to the financials because I love doing that. I love digging and saying, “Whoa.” And I said that about Lyft. Said it, if you own Lyft, you’re going to be in trouble.

Frank Curzio: These guys inflated that market completely in the last six months and nothing has really changed. They had full studies on it and I broke it down and I was right on that. But I love that part because when you go public, you have to create this beautiful picture portrait that you are the greatest, you’re seeing massive growth. Everything’s awesome. That’s the goal. That’s how you get this thing launched.

Frank Curzio: So, I usually love that part when F1s get filed, and they have to report the financials and their risks and stuff. And you dig through that. I like that. It’s like a puzzle that you want to just try find different things out and the numbers are there for everyone. It’s just how you interpret them. And I love doing that. Interpreting those numbers and can be exactly what they mean. But no, Coinbase didn’t do that. They actually came out with their results.

Frank Curzio: So, why did they release the results early? Because they were absolutely insane. They were awesome. They make Goldman Sachs numbers look like crap. You saw Goldman’s numbers today, unbelievable, unbelievable. Just the evil empire. But man, those guys know how to make money, they really do. And I’m glad that Goldman Sachs isn’t holding any cursory research advisory newsletter, getting a little bit over 200.

Frank Curzio: So, we’re three 320, 330 now, it’s going to 400 easily. But those numbers, we just said liquidity volatility, those are the greatest things for Goldman. And that’s going to continue for the next three to five years, at least, as long as we have money being injected like crazy, which is to the tune of 10 and a half-trillion dollars.

Frank Curzio: When you look at Fiscal Monetary, 10 and a half trillion, and that doesn’t include the 2.3 trillion infrastructure that we’re looking to pass, put that into perspective guys, that’s close to 50% of GDP. You wonder why stocks are going up? You wonder why everyone’s spending like crazy because they all getting checks at the same time for free. And now, they’re not as locked up as they were in the house during COVID as restrictions are easing, so good job by Goldman.

Frank Curzio: Okay, back to Coinbase numbers. Absolutely insane. This is for Q1. Two weeks ago reported, but the generated 1.8 billion in revenue, just for the quarter, that’s an 11-fold increase and 58% more than they collected the entire year in 2020. Again, these are quality results. And right now, I’m looking at it being valued at, and the indication is 350.

Frank Curzio: So, around a $75, $80 billion evaluation. I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred billion dollar evaluation by the end of the day. There’s so much excitement built around this right now.

Frank Curzio: But in terms of timing, it doesn’t get better than that. I mean, how lucky was Coinbase reporting those numbers? Which were absolutely perfect. So, Coinbase, when they reported their quarterly results about two weeks ago, I told you to remember some numbers, but I’m going to bring it up again because when they filed in December, they’re a lot different than what they are now.

Frank Curzio: Coinbase said it now has 56 million users. They had 35 million in December. That’s a massive, massive amount needed for four months. Just a few months. 233 billion in assets on the platform. In December, they said they had 25 billion trading volume was 335 billion for the quarter for the entire 2020. Their total trading volume was 320 billion for the year. Last quarter, it was 335 billion just for three months. Insane, insane, insane growth, but perfect timing. I mean, I can tell you when they did this, yeah crypto was hot. Nobody thought Bitcoin, there’s only 22,000 in December would be 63,000 in April.

Frank Curzio: And man, this result exploded to trading and assets and everything crypto and everyone’s getting involved in it now. And it’s incredible. But in terms of timing, it doesn’t get better than that because if you look at past IPO’s in Facebook, Facebook came out in the 50s. I think it was 2012, is that IPO. And it fell sharply to the point Morgan Stanley had to come out to try to stabilize a stock.

Frank Curzio: I guess they figured out how to make money and they did very, very well. And they’re doing well now for all shareholders, is it three, 10, or $300 now? Facebook, with the count of 50s, I think, it fell to the 30s.

Frank Curzio: 2004 Google’s IPO, do you remember that? They actually had to drop the price from $108 to $85, because nobody wanted it. Nobody wanted it. Then, we started trading weeks ahead and went back up to a 100, which was cool, but they had to dropped it. They dropped the price. Google and it’s 2004.

Frank Curzio: So, the market started coming back, right? 2004, we had the terrible market conditions for three years after the tech bubble crash, the dot com crash. In 2003, we saw tech companies come back, 2004, decent year. And that’s when the growth actually started going nuts.

Frank Curzio: So, Google back then, they gave it a $27 billion evaluation. It’s IPO to put that in perspective. Google’s market cap? Is a mere 1.5 trillion, but these guys had trouble launching their IPO’s. I mean, the market didn’t really, you know, you need that market. Positive conditions, bullish conditions. And they really didn’t have that too much when it came to Facebook and Google, but Coinbase, totally opposite.

Frank Curzio: I mean, it doesn’t get better? The timing could not have been better, could not. Then, everything worked out in their favor and now you’re seeing it mentioned everywhere at crypto, we talk about it a lot. Something that we’re into very much, here at Curzio Research, but everyone’s getting interested in it now because they’re seeing the gains. They feel, that fear of missing out is a real thing. When you see your friends say, “Oh, I bought this and my thousand dollars turned into $15,000 or $20,000.”

Frank Curzio: You keep saying that it goes higher and higher. People want to learn more about it, and they’re starting to learn more and get more involved. And now, Coinbase is the place they go to. The market is at all-time high, tons of institutions adopting Bitcoin. I’d say about 3% of the way. That was based on my interview with Zac Prince from Blockfi, $3 billion company, I interviewed a few weeks ago. It’s about three to 5% in terms of adoption demand or the freaking roof everybody wants crypto’s now.

Frank Curzio: The very nice job by Coinbase because sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Again, although Coinbase is a great company. Well-run, that’s profitable and growing very fast, but, and you know what they said about the word ‘but’, whenever you say ‘but’ everything you say before that it’s meaningless. But okay, let’s break down the numbers a little. And this is for all of you who are looking to buy Coinbase when it opens up later today. And maybe you bought it already, because you’re going to be listening to this later on if the market’s closed, or you’re going to buy tomorrow or next week.

Frank Curzio: So, Coinbase report a 1.8 billion in revenue last quarter, operating income gross to over a billion, which was double from last year. Again, the results were amazing. That’s why they published them. And that’s what I published them. It gives them more excitement for here, raises that target price, that IPO price. Again, that indication is at 350 right now.

Frank Curzio: You’re looking at 1.8 billion of revenue operating income of 1 billion. And we’re talking monster margins there, right? Why your margin so high? So, that’s something I wanted to know. And I wanted to dig into it.

Frank Curzio: If you look at Coinbase, they charge 0.5% flat fees on trades. Most of the time, your clients may be a little bit less, depending on how much you trade. But on average, around .5% and those trading fees is where the company generates more than 85% of its sales from. Those trading fees, payable like 87, 88%, according to their filing. Now, we compare that to intercontinental or NASDAQ, these are publicly traded companies that own exchanges. These guys on average, make 0.01% portrayed that amounts to Coinbase having 50X, the margins of NASDAQ and Intercontinental.

Frank Curzio: Now, I’m pretty sure Jeff Bezos said this, and if he didn’t, somebody said it and Jeff Bezos is stolen from him. But regardless, I like this quote. Most of the time, I don’t quote. If you’re going to say something, be original, you don’t have to quote somebody else. But I will say this, this is one of the quotes I like is, “Your margins are my opportunity.”

Frank Curzio: That’s how Amazon looks at things. These are incredible monster margins. Insane. I know you’re thinking, NASDAQ into continental? They’re not crypto platforms, so not direct competitors, true, but not for long. We talk about a 2 trillion, $2.3 trillion market. If you really believe Bitcoin’s going to a hundred thousand, it’s going to be three, three and a half trillion. There’s a reason why Morgan Stanley JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs are jumping into this market now because it’s just too big to ignore, just leaving money on the table. That’s for real.

Frank Curzio: You’ll get Binance, Binance already released a crypto that allows you to buy fractional shares in Tesla. So, I’m sure Fang names are going to be next. And every stock trading under the New York stock exchange. There’s a positive. Coinbase and other exchanges may take market share from you as exchanges. But it’s just a matter of time before certain cryptos are able to be bought through your E-Trade fidelity Schwab accounts, your online brokers, just a matter of time. It’s a certainty. Now that Coinbase has paved the road in terms of getting the proper regulation, FINRA, SEC, this opens a door for these firms. And again, it’s such a big market. They’re going to get it. They have the proper licenses. They could do it, just a matter of getting the technology and hiring people maybe from Coinbase now.

Frank Curzio: Which Coinbase by the way, has a larger market cap than I think almost every exchange, market caps of exchanges combined in the US. But you’re looking at Robinhood, Kraken, Binance, Gemini, these other crypto exchanges.

Frank Curzio: What are they going to do? And what did Robinhood do to disrupt the entire online brokerage industry? They said, “no fees.” No fees. And what they’re being valued at, I mean, before everything went nuts with them, Reddit and GameStop. I think it was about 15 billion. I think they were being valued at? And they disrupted the entire industry. They forced all these online brokers to offer no fees and yes, they make money on trading and they’re doing well. That’s fine. But you look at Robinhood, Kraken, Binance, and what do you think they’re going to do? They’re going to lower their trading fees to get business.

Frank Curzio: Do you need to go to a free trading model? What’s going to happen to Coinbase? Remember: 85% of their revenue comes from trading and fees and their margins are insanely high. That’s cool. Now, what I found interesting during Coinbase is Q1 in that press release. The company did not provide any sales or earnings guidance. If you’ve done a report early, because you’ve got great numbers, you should provide guidance. And I get that tough considering what we saw over the past four months in crypto, which has been insane.

Frank Curzio: And then also, what we saw in 2018, when crypto crashed by 80%. So, it’s hard to offer guidance, but at this insane evaluation, how does Coinbase not offer guidance? And more importantly, how does an investor buy this name without having just a little insight of what’s coming down the line? Because I can tell you if this is a stock and it’s a high growth name, Nvidia or whatever.

Frank Curzio: And again, they got away with not offering guidance because of COVID. Now, they’re going back to offering guidance, but this is a high growth stock trading on the NASDAQ, and they report and they don’t offer guidance. The stock’s going to fall pretty hard. There’s no excuse for you now not offer guidance. There’s not.

Frank Curzio: Then, you figured out COVID maybe supply chain issues for Nvidia, or it’s not really impacting Nvidia, but it’s impacting a lot of companies within that space, but you want to see that guidance. If it doesn’t stop going to fall hard. Why? Because no guidance means uncertainty and uncertainty is something that investors hate. There’s a reason why Alibaba shares surged after they got fined by the China government, because it removes the uncertainty.

Frank Curzio: When you have that uncertain environment and you have no idea how much that fine’s going to be, people don’t want to deal with the company. I don’t want to deal with uncertainty. The hell with that, no way. So, you see almost every time a company settles a lawsuit is almost to put them out of business, the stock is going to go higher because you’re removing the doubt. Now, you could forecast. You could focus on the business now, not worry about bullshit and everything that you’ve been fighting for five, seven, ten years.

Frank Curzio: So for me, I’m surprised Coinbase didn’t offer guidance. I mean, you offered Q1 sales and earnings when you were not a public company. So, why not provide guidance? Good question. Coinbase did provide Monthly Transaction Users. Those are called MTUs, Monthly Transaction Users. They applied that guidance for 2021, which is 5.5 million. That’s the mid-point of what they said, 5.5 million. Now, what is MTU? They measure it with retail investors on their site, who make a transaction on their platform one or more times during a rolling 28-day period. That’s how it’s defined. Just Monthly Transaction Users. A lot of companies do daily active users and average revenue per user, they do monthly transaction users, very, very big metric in this space. Now, when I looked at the 5.5 million guidance they offered that’s lower, actually lower than the 6.1 million MTUs Coinbase reported in their quarter from just two weeks ago. Why you’re predicting lower guidance, especially for this metric, which you made it clear by reporting this is the key metric?

Frank Curzio: I’m not going to say, “Don’t buy Coinbase here.” Obviously not, it’s a great company. It’s stock can go to 200, 300, it could do that in two weeks for all I know, I have no idea where these stocks go. I would’ve told you that Tesla was expensive at 300, right? It’s 650 or 750 now. No one is making fun of Cathie Wood for buying anymore, right? Amazing. You look at Coinbase and the risks I mentioned. That guidance, when I looked more into it, I mean, Coinbase maybe doing it, which is pretty smart, I guess, for early stage company to under promise and over deliver. You’ll want to report crazy guidance and then go under… So, maybe that number is kind of conservative, maybe. Even the risk they talk about are trading fees and a lot of competitors going to a free model. Managers are well aware of this, they know. They know these risks. They’re going to look for more ways to generate massive fees, maybe through investment banking, more lending, whatever it is, you can try to figure it out.

Frank Curzio: But what I do know about Coinbase, when it comes… And not just Coinbase, but companies that command a high evaluation. When they have those high valuations, they command future growth. You need to see huge growth going forward. That’s why your stock is expensive. That’s what investors want to see. They want to see that guidance. And Coinbase, they may have trouble meeting those estimates depending on where crypto goes over the next few quarters, especially when it comes to new competition, you opened up the door, that’s cool. AOL opened up the door, look where they are. Research In Motion opened up the door for smart phones, look where they are. So, Coinbase can’t afford to sit on its hands and say, “Hey, we did it.” No, this is a massive market that the biggest companies and most well run investment banks in the world are pushing, going all in on right now. Because this is a major market and they have to be prepared. Are they? We’ll see.

Frank Curzio: But lower trading fees are definitely coming, so the margins are not going to be as high. That’s a given. And then you look at crypto, and we haven’t really seen a pullback since May 2020. Yeah, 10% here, 10% there, which is not a big deal for Bitcoin because two weeks later, we’re right back to its highs. I’m talking about a major pullback like we saw in March, 30% decline and 30… Whatever percent decline. And it did combat the markets with COVID. But since May 2020, this has been one of the greatest bull markets you’ve ever seen. It’s incredible.

Frank Curzio: But you can’t assume the total crypto market is going to surge another 200% plus over the next four months like it did from December to April. Maybe that’s why they’re not offering guidance. I can tell you when the market crashed, Coinbase stopped reporting their numbers in 2018. They were reporting in 2017, that’s great. But then they stopped so did Binance. Because as crypto started coming down and there’s a lot of leverage in it, the few who are getting killed and not trading as much, those numbers went down considerably and they’re private and they didn’t have to report them. But this is based on how crypto does. If we see Bitcoin go to a 100,000, Coinbase is going to be one of biggest beneficiaries. But it better go higher because at this valuation, I mean, there’s lots of expectations built in.

Frank Curzio: And you can go ahead and buy Coinbase. And it is a great company, awesome company, and congratulations to them because this is going to change the market. The US is going to regulate these things, you’re going to see more adoption, more innovation, so congrats to them. But for me, which is why you listen to me, these are fine investment ideas. A much better way to play this, if you truly think Bitcoin’s going a 100,000. If you don’t, don’t buy Coinbase, obviously just don’t buy crypto. But if you really believe that, that it’s going a lot higher, you should play it through pure plays like Voyager Digital. That’s V-Y-G-V-F is the symbol. Silvergate Capital, S-I. You can even buy the Binance token, B-N-B is the symbol. You’re not going to get equity stake in it, but this is a utility token that has tons and tons and tons of uses. I mean that’s what all these things are worth, right? It’s a utility token. What’s the utility? Most of these names, there’s a hundred cryptos now.

Frank Curzio: A hundred cryptos with a billion dollar more valuation. And I can tell you 85% of them, you have no idea what that token represents. And a lot of them don’t even have any utility, so the token is worthless. It’s like Dave & Buster’s, when you slide your card, if it’s empty, it’s worthless but if you have a card you can go to old Dave & Buster’s and play. But if Dave & Buster’s closed down, that card’s worthless. That’s a utility. Same with these tokens. Binance has more functions and more utilities for its token than any token I know in the world. This one has been our portfolio for a while, we’ve done well on. In fact, all three of these names we have in our Crypto Intelligence newsletter, which we’re up huge on. How much? Voyager is up 30x plus in our Crypto Intelligence newsletter. SI, Silvergate is up 12x.

Frank Curzio: And BNB, recommended probably like two years ago around there, I think, don’t quote me on that, we’re also up 30x plus on this name. I know what you’re thinking, “Frankie, are you really telling me to buy these things when they are up 30x?” Yeah. I mean, I would normally never recommend stocks that were up so much because you feel like, “Oh, okay, I missed it.” But did you miss it? Because these are pure play stocks that you could buy. And here’s what we are providing in Crypto Intelligence, where it’s not just all cryptos and we teach you how to buy these cryptos and what exchanges. But there’s a lot of pure play stocks that we’ve gotten into that people didn’t know about, including Voyager and including Silvergate.

Frank Curzio: But if you really believe that this market’s going to go a higher… Because I could say Voyager only has a $3 billion market cap. Silvergate only has a $3.8 billion market cap. The Binance token has a $7 billion market cap. Again, it’s not an equity stake but, I mean, those guys are absolutely amazing there. Their technology, Binance Cloud, those guys are… That’s the largest exchange in the world. They’re much bigger. I think they have 250 pairs that trade on their site compared to Coinbase, I think it’s probably 60-ish, I think, maybe a little bit more. Around those numbers. You crypto maniacs don’t send me an email saying, “Frankie, you know the numbers.” It’s around those numbers. You can see how big Binance is. The biggest exchange in the world. But BNB has been away that people are saying, “We could play this.” But when you look at a Voyager at $3 billion market cap, Silvergate $3.8 billion, I mean, compared to Coinbase, whatever it comes at, $75 billion plus, it’s a better way to play it. And that’s how you have to look at it. I know the excitement around Coinbase, I know it’s a good company, I know they reported good numbers. You need to buy these stock because you think Bitcoin is going $100,000, so going much higher because if it’s not, this stock’s going to come down. It’s going to come down.

Frank Curzio: I mean, that’s why those numbers are so great. And maybe they continue to report those numbers if we stay the same. But if we see a 30%, 40% decline, which we could see in crypto, I’m not predicting that. But… And hopefully it doesn’t market top because it checks every single box of why they should be a top. So hopefully, it doesn’t market top just like every industry ETF that comes out. Usually, it comes out the top of the market because they’re able to sell it. And if you go back and look at that ETF, you’ll see it down for like six months or a year, and then go all the way back up. They always launch them at the wrong times, which is the right time for them in terms of making money, because everyone’s excited about it. You’re not going to launch something that no one’s excited about.

Frank Curzio: And nobody cares about crypto when it crashed at $4,000. No way you’re raising money. But that’s how I would play it. Also, very important you understand this guys, the security token market is here. It’s finally here. You just had a company named Exodus who raised $75 million for a Reg A offering. I’m pretty sure they got the whole $75 million like 80% done within a few hours. The largest security token raise in history. And when you look at Coinbase and what they’ve been doing over the past four months and who they’ve been talking to, I mean, they’re 100% focused on tokenized assets. And they said it publicly, they’ve contacted so many contacts that I know within this industry. They know that that’s the growth in their platform, tokenized assets, security tokens.

Frank Curzio: It’s gotten me talking about this like crazy for the past few months leading up to today’s IPO and that’s really exciting stuff. And especially for us, our CEO token, security token, where investors get equity in our company, Curzio Research just like a stock. We also pay a dividend, which amounted to 1.7% annually, every single quarter we paid it. And we’re also in the process of getting our financials audited. Which are going to be done at the end of this month, which I think we will be the only token with audited financials, especially with equity, stake, and pay a dividend in the world.

Frank Curzio: And what does that do? It provides transparency. It’s a pain in the ass to get your financials audited. Let me tell you something, holy cow. I mean thousands of documents, going back four years as we started the company, but to get audited for the first time, holy cow. But that’s what we want and we’re paying for it and it’s expensive, but what is that going to provide? Transparency. And that’s what you need in this industry. That’s how security tokens are going to go to the next level by providing equity stakes.

Frank Curzio: And you going to see lots of companies be a great position, just like us, to raise money, to build their company, to build out their… Be able for investors to trade your stock a year later, instead of a private company where the average liquidity period is 7 to 10 years whether it’s an IPO or they get taken out. Or you do a Reg A offering, you could trade even quicker. But here’s a way for smaller companies to raise money to bypass the fees, the system and everything. This is the future. It’s here and it’s going to get huge especially now that Coinbase is out there. And our goal is to trade on Coinbase or trade on the exchanges that are going to come out over the next 6 to 12 months.

Frank Curzio: And a lot of them including alternative training platforms are being launched as we speak. But the fact that Coinbase, the IPO in the US, this is great, great news for the entire industry. I hope they do well, I highlighted the risks, I highlighted why. I don’t know if I buy Coinbase up here. And if you want to buy it, buy it, that’s fine, maybe it goes a lot higher, I hope it does. I hope they do well. But if you really believe crypto’s going to go higher, the other place have much smaller market caps so you see bigger gains. And I could tell you, I know you’re looking at stocks that were up 20x and 30x. I’ve missed my biggest winners because I was going to buy it, it went up 15%, I’m like, “Shit.” And two weeks later, it’s up 20%, then it’s up 50%, I’m like, “Shit.”

Frank Curzio: And next thing you know, it went from 10% to 20%, I’m like, “I can’t believe I missed it.” Now, look at it a year later and it’s like 60%. Buy a small position in it at least you own it. And if it comes down because you bought it too high, you could answer your position and lower your cost basis, that’s how you do it. Scale into these things. You don’t know if crypto is going to be 64… There’s so much hype around Bitcoin, $64,000. Maybe it goes a lot lower, I don’t know. It could, maybe it goes back down to $50,000. And if you own cryptos and Coinbase, you’re going to see a lot of those assets come down a value you could add to it. Because you’re going to see ups and downs. It’s going to be straight up like it’s been, guys, it’s not. It’s not going to go from $22,000 to $65,000 in four months and then go to a $100,000. Maybe it does but you’re going to see ebbs and flows. You do that with every stock, every market, it’s not a complete bull market no matter what. It’s not.

Frank Curzio: And things are pretty insane right now. So, congrats to Coinbase. I gave you a lots of ways to play it. Hopefully, it’s not too much. This is not a crypto podcast, even though our company is based on… We launched our CEO token. That’s how much I believe in this industry, two years ago. It’s trading on MERJ Exchange, excited about. But that is a big topic, and I love to see you guys make money, especially when you’re taking on risk. You want to be able to maximize those returns and in crypto what’s going on, and new names and new innovation, and different trends. You’re seeing it’s NFTs now, it’s going to be security tokens next, it’s going to continue to evolve just like the internet involved with so many different things. You look at social media it’s only 10 years old, 12 years old. Now, you look at quantum computing, 5G is the next lay… I mean, we keep innovating within the internet and how many industries it’s disrupting. And somebody’s going to have the blockchains and somebody’s going to have the crypto because it is definitely here.

Frank Curzio: Now, today’s interview amazing, amazing guest. He’s a first-time guest. And by the way, today’s interview Wall Street Unplugged being sponsored by blockchain.com. The most trusted cryptocurrency platforms in the world, with over 70 million wallets and over $800 billion in transactions since 2011. It’s an awesome company, guys. Now, look you can trade your favorite cryptos in blockchain.com, but you can earn up to 13% interest annually in your crypto like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or stable coins like USD Tether. So, for more information, start your account, visit blockchain.com, that’s blockchain.com. Again, a company… I’m only to be advertising companies on here that I trust. They’re paying us a lot of money to do that, our advertisers, which is awesome, which I like. Because what does that do? No, it doesn’t go right into my pocket. It allows me to build this podcast, to market it even more to where we’re getting guests like the one that’s coming up right now. His name is Dan Held.

Frank Curzio: If you’re not in crypto, you probably haven’t heard of him. But in 2013, Dan was part of the original crypto meetup in San Francisco where the founders of Kraken, Coinbase, and Litecoin discussed how Bitcoin was going to revolutionize the world. Not bad. That’s a pretty cool meeting to be at. In fact, Dan invested in Bitcoin at $10 and he still owns it.

Frank Curzio: After selling his company to Kraken, one of the largest crypto exchanges next to Coinbase and Binance, he’s now the growth lead at Kraken. So, he’s responsible for growing that amazing exchange. Now, I look at Dan, if I was him, I’d be the most arrogant guy in the world saying, “I told you so,” and “look how great I am,” and pounding my chest, and being good… No, he’s not an arrogant crypto guy. He’s not a guy that’s going to tell you, “I told you so.” Instead he’s been educating hundreds of thousands of people on Bitcoin for close to nine years. Which is… Yeah, that makes him like a dinosaur. It’s like the equivalent investing alongside Warren Buffett when he first started Berkshire Hathaway 50 plus years ago, right? Being nine years into crypto market could be considered being a 30 year vet in the stock market.

Frank Curzio: So, the timing of this interview cannot be more perfect with the Coinbase IPO. And Dan is going to break that IPO down, what it means for the entire industry, including his company Kraken where he thinks Bitcoin… So, he liked Kraken but he’s also giving you the forecast on Bitcoin. I’m almost stumbling here because the forecast he gives is pretty insane. I mean, forget $100,000, forget $300,000. And who am I to say, no way, considering here’s a guy who bought at $10 and he’s been dead right thus far. In fact, he’s going to show you the easiest way to educate yourself on Bitcoin and why it’s not too late to do so. So, I love this guy. Great interview. Let’s get to it now. Bitcoin legend, pioneer, Dan Held. Dan Held, thanks so much for joining us on Wall Street Unplugged.

Dan Held: Thanks for having me.

Frank Curzio: Well, so let’s start with Kraken. Because I read on your site that you’re part of the original 2013 crypto meetup group. I’m quoting you here in San Francisco, which was comprised of the founders of Kraken, Coinbase, Litecoin and others, 2013. I guess, in your wildest dreams, did you think Bitcoin, the crypto market, Kraken, will be where they are today and how big this market has grown?

Dan Held: It was certainly a wild dream, let’s put it that way. Back in that day, it was a small group of us, I mean, tiny. There wasn’t much money in the space, there hadn’t been many investments. There certainly wasn’t any sort of validation by the mainstream world. We were considered to be kind of lunatics. We were like a small group of weirdos that believed in this Bitcoin thing. So yeah, my hypothesis was that Bitcoin would be widely regarded as gold 2.0 someday and it has. And I think it took immense fortitude to stick with it all these years because you got your friends, family, co-workers, lovers, telling you that you’re wrong. It’s a lot to go through.

Dan Held: But yeah, I am incredibly impressed with how far Bitcoin’s come. Bitcoin has survived so much conflict and turmoil, including like a civil war. I’m not sure if your audience knows about that, but that’s kind of a little known fact, I think in the mainstream world that Bitcoin even survived a civil war within its own ranks. So, Bitcoin the fact that it survived this long, I think it’s just testament to how decentralized and resilience it is.

Frank Curzio: Now, you have a lot of experience here where you’re former company, Interchange, that’s what you sold to Kraken. And prior to that you had Uber, you created early crypto products, we have ChangeTip acquired by Airbnb, ZeroBlock acquired by blockchain.com. So, I would imagine that during all these projects which just seemed like every one of them was successful, that people have told you were crazy along the line, right?

Dan Held: Yeah. Look, certainly these aren’t all exits where I’m making like $10 million or something. Some of these are more acqui-hire exits. But yeah, I’ve got a tremendous respect for inventors and founders. Where when you begin something, if you want to make a lot of money, you have to build something that no one else is thinking about or no one else believes will work. So inherently you are short everyone else. And so it takes a lot of mental strength to persevere through that.

Dan Held: Any invention, whether it be Uber, Bitcoin, the telephone, light bulbs, everyone at the time, their immediate response is, “I’m afraid of this. I’m scared of this. I don’t believe it’s going to make change happen.” Now, one of my favorite Twitter accounts is called the Pessimists Archive. The Pessimists Archive goes back to like 1880. And they go find newspaper clippings around different topics like the bicycle or the light bulb. And they write about how people were afraid of it at first, where they’re like, “The bicycle’s going to distort our brains because we’re going too fast. For women, it’s going to hurt their posture, and it’s going to make them deformed.”

Dan Held: I mean, ridiculous ideas. I mean the bicycle is such a ridiculous thing to criticize. But yeah, with any new technology humans again, we’re not exactly like… We have come into civilization very, very recently in our evolutionary timeline. And when we encounter something new, we act like an animal would, we are scared of it, afraid of it. We’re like, “I don’t trust this. I don’t get it.” We don’t give it a kind of cold rational perspective when we first approach something. So Bitcoin, like any other new technology had this heavy, heavy skepticism in the beginning. But over the last 10 years, it’s overcome a lot of that especially in the last six months.

Frank Curzio: You know, I was going to ask you because you are a massive fan of Bitcoin where a lot of people might say, you’re a fan of crypto. But from what I read, and I may be wrong on this and sorry if I’m putting words in your mouth, but it seems like there’s a lot of tokens out there. I won’t call them shit tokens, but just a lot of things that don’t work, but you really love Bitcoin. And I guess you kind of answered that, but I’d love for you to go more into it because people look at Bitcoin in so many different ways. I mean, they see it as a store value, an alternative currency. Has your view changed on it from 2013 to today? Where I would think it’s becoming an alternative currency where you could use it in more and more and more stuff, you see PayPal and everybody else coming up. I’m just wondering if any of that has changed or just to like, hey, this is a better alternative of keeping money as a store of value than putting it in gold?

Dan Held: Yeah. So, I’d like to think about when a product or protocol solves a problem… Ultimately, every product or service or protocol solves a problem for its customers, which is us humans. When it does that, it is tackling something that we call a TAM, Total Addressable Market. So, how big is the problem that it’s solving? Store of value or storing value is the largest TAM of any product service or protocol in the world. So, let’s give it some scope here. Gold is worth $10 trillion. Negatively yielding sovereign debt is around $18 trillion. And you’ve got fiat cash and all the dollars in one and two, and all the fiat money in the system, and that’s in the tens of trillions. And then, you have real estate, which is in the hundreds of trillions. And if you look at New York, San Francisco, where I live, London, a lot of real estate is used as a store of value. There are a bunch of empty apartments and empty homes for the wealthy to park their money.

Dan Held: Bitcoin competes with all of these. And also I should’ve thrown in offshore banking. Bitcoin competes with all of these as like a private Swiss bank account that you can access on your phone. This is incredibly powerful and changes the dynamic of governments and how they control money. So, Bitcoin is tackling that. Now other people thought Bitcoin might also be useful for these other things. But Bitcoin doesn’t need to have any other utility other than being a store of value at this current stage in its evolution as a new money. New money doesn’t come into existence very often. And this new money had to first go through the store of value era, the most lucrative highest TAM era before it can get into the one that we commonly refer to as a currency, the medium of exchange unit of account era.

Dan Held: I go to the grocery store and use dollar signs, I’m like, that’s the unit of account. There’s dollar signs in my groceries. And the medium of exchange is the common everyday payment method that I use to pay for things. A lot of people think Bitcoin has failed because it’s not used as an everyday payment method, but that comes much later after Bitcoin goes through the store of value era where people believe in it and store value in it. A kind of funny story and that story with this, but kind of a funny analogy or kind of a word of wisdom is, I live in the quintessential gold rush city of San Francisco. There’s not one store in the entire city of San Francisco where you can pay for things in gold, but gold is still worth $10 trillion. It doesn’t make gold worth any less. So, store of value is what Bitcoin is primarily useful for at the moment. If you can’t use it to buy groceries or anything else, that’s not a big deal, that comes much, much later, like a decade or two from now.

Frank Curzio: Now, I notice you’re someone who’s been in this industry for such a long time, but now you’re seeing more institutional adoption. And you’re seeing guys like Ray Dalio, Michael Saylor, who get tons of attention, who get the headlines. Because for me, in order for this to get as big you had to see Wall Street kind of merge with crypto. And that wasn’t that easy because I think that those two groups don’t like each other very much. But I wanted to get more into that because it seems like you’ve seen that integration, you’ve seen Wall Street, you’ve seen more adoption.

Frank Curzio: But when I see people like Ray Dalio and Michael Saylor, who are speaking at Texas A&M this week, talking about Bitcoin as an asset conference class, I think I saw that in your Twitter account. Those names are getting promoted yet you have been one of the earliest adopters, one of the smartest guys in this industry, and you’re actually speaking of Texas A&M, as well, ahead of these guys. But they don’t seem to mention you that much, but these guys are getting all the headlights. I mean, does that still bother you? Because I get it, it’s great to see those guys coming in, but they should be listening to you, right?

Dan Held: I mean, look, I’m well-known in crypto but I’m not well-known outside of crypto versus these are legendary CEOs or legendary hedge fund managers. So no, I don’t take it offensively. I’m pretty early in my career, so we’ll see what happens over the next 5 to 10 years. But if I’m right and I stick around, I think there’s a very good chance that my audience… Right now, I’m at 170,000 Twitter followers and I’m getting 30,000 Twitter followers a month. So, very good chance that in the future… It’s pretty weird to see my call turnout correct after eight years. Seeing all these institutions validate that I was right almost feels wrong. Because for such a long time they were on the other side of the table telling me that I’m wrong, and now that they’re coming over here, I’m like, “Oh wow, it’s actually happening. I wasn’t crazy. I was right.”

Dan Held: And I mean, if I am right about Bitcoin, Bitcoin fundamentally changes everything about money. It changes the relationship of governments controlling their money and this undermines everything. It undermines their control over the population, it undermines control over taxes and control over spending. I don’t think people really understand at the deepest libertarian level, what this means for humankind. I think Bitcoin is one of the greatest tools for freedom. It’s like the separation of church and state, we need the separation of money and state. The US didn’t formally have… the Government formerly didn’t control money. In fact, a lot of the founding fathers were very against the idea of the central bank. So, I view Bitcoin as kind of a check and balance to state power or government power.

Frank Curzio: Now that’s great, I love the way you put that. So, I want to transition here because I can keep going on Bitcoin. I’ve really loved the way you put state and money. But let’s get into Kraken, because right now it says you’re the growth lead at Kraken. Kraken is a very large exchange. Why don’t you give us some of the things that Kraken, maybe if the people who aren’t familiar with that platform? Some of them are, we have our own crypto products here that we sell in financial newsletters. But talk about what the growth lead means and maybe a little bit about Kraken because it is exciting what you guys are building over there as well.

Dan Held: Yeah, great question. So, I work at Kraken. Kraken is one of the oldest and largest crypto exchanges in the space. It’s founded by Jesse Powell really, really early OG. He got really involved early, like 2010, 2011. And I think that Kraken… Especially, I think, right now, as Coinbase is about to IPO tomorrow.

Dan Held: Coinbase is probably our number one competitor that we look to because we operate in a lot of the same markets in the US and Europe. Those are our two biggest markets. And the U S Coinbase is currently number one, and in Europe, we’re typically number one. And that, I mean that in terms of like a US dollar to crypto volume, US dollar to Bitcoin, dollar to Ethereum, and same with Ethereum to dollars. And then, if we look at Europe, it’s Euro to Bitcoin, Euro to Ethereum. And so, when we look at those trading pairs, that’s how we kind of evaluate competitive performance. So we’re, you know, we are very excited for our… I think in tech, there’s a lot of… Even a lot of camaraderie even with competitor companies, we all want to win, but a rising tide raises all ships.

Dan Held: And I think Coinbase is IPO tomorrow is definitely going to be a great shining light onto the space of, hey, this is a real asset class. These companies are making real money and these are legitimate. You know, these are legitimate companies making real money, versus crypto before it was kind of considered a little bit, kind of like a little bit niche. Now, for cracking, we’re looking at this, and we’re looking at our user numbers, and crypto just reached a $2 trillion market cap. Like, this is not something to be ignored. And I think that’s really, really cool. And when we look at Q1 2021, most of our metrics beat all of 2020, and one quarter, this is the sort of growth that crypto companies experience in these bull runs. And, I just think it’s so exciting to see us really, really start to dig in there. And I’m trying to figure out what sort of exact metrics, you know, that I can. I can say… But yeah, let’s see.

Frank Curzio: I think that’s good enough. I think a lot of people are trading on your site that, that listen to this, but yeah. But for just one of the largest exchanges, because obviously they wanted to compare it to the Coinbase IPO, which is going to be valued at a hundred billion. And we do this Tuesday, this could be published on Wednesday. But… And that’s what I want to talk about how it, I mean, it, it’s got to be it has to be great for you guys. I know you, so it is a competitor; but yet, it’s just such a small industry still compared to how big it can get. I would think this is fantastic for you. You’re seeing Binance, even though that token is not tied to BNB tokens, not tied to, an equity stake, but you’re seeing that thing go up tremendously, especially with the past few weeks and a past few months actually. But I would think that has to be great for great companies like yourself, because like you said, the oldest exchange where you guys are also one of the biggest in the world.

Dan Held: Totally. Yeah. We… You know, all of these trading volumes are public information, so you can go to cryptowatch.com, or to watch Kraken products, where we display real-time market data and volumes for all the exchanges and assets in the space. So, if you go on there, you can filter by exchanges by volume and yeah, you can check out our volume and Coinbase is volume and financed all the other company, all the other exchanges at the space. And these numbers are huge. These numbers are very, very large. So yeah, I think that it’s just so exciting to see these institutions come in, give validation to Bitcoin, which therefore I think brings in more retail and a lot of bit coiners don’t understand that, that retail, a lot of retails waiting in the wings until institutions tell them that this is legitimate.

Dan Held: And so this will, I think, ultimately spur reflexive loop. In this bull run, where we could see things get really, really hot. And yeah, I think for cracking, it just, as a company, it’s a thrilling spot to be in. I was growth at Uber. So, working at Uber headquarters on growth product and growth marketing, seeing us go from tens of millions of customers to hundreds of millions and, with crack and we’re, we’re at a little bit earlier era, but it feels the same that, that energy, that vibe that we know… We are hiring as fast as we can, and getting great people in, and seeing how fast we can move. You know, this is all thrilling for me as, as the growth lead, as the head of growth I crack and it’s, it’s something that I live for this moment.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. It’s great. Congratulations on that. And I guess, let me ask you this: Where do you see the next leg of disruption? I feel like there’s the internet where, you know, social media is only around 10 years old, right? I mean, it’s just… First, it was all just getting online, but every single industry has been disrupted by the internet and continues to be with 5G quantum computing, AI, it just continues. And I feel like it’s the same thing that we see at blockchain and crypto. But you know, we had DeFi started, 2019, 2020, and it’s still an exploding trend. NFTs are exploding now. Is it security tokens? We launched our security token, the first ever, called Curzio Equity Owners. We’re the first to give an equity stake, paid a dividend, trade in the foreign exchange, to be available to retail investors. But do you see that market, or is it something else, that you maybe could say that it could be the next disruption or, again, it’s always difficult to see, right?

Dan Held: Yeah. I mean, that’s what’s tricky about crypto is that the adding flow of narratives or what’s hot is really intense. There’s kind of a co narrative of Bitcoin gold, 2.0 store of value. And that drives a majority of the volume in the space. if you look at the trading volume of Bitcoin pairs and Ethereum pairs, those are huge. So, I think with DeFi, that’s a pretty strong narrative, same with NFTs. NFTs have kind of quickly come and go in terms of narrative half that’s par for the course for crypto. So yeah, I think, DeFi in the space has gotten a lot of interest. You know, my own personal feelings are that I’m really interested in Bitcoin and its promise for being gold 2.0, but certainly others in this space, I think are inching cracking itself as interested in, in the DeFi space and very much leaning into that.

Frank Curzio: And that was going to lead to my next question. You are fully engulfed in Bitcoin and a lot of my good contacts love that. And because they see there’s a lot of crap out there, but are there any other projects that interest you and you kind of answered that, but I wasn’t too sure if there’s anything else or if it’s Ethereum. I guess, we use people talk about, but that’s an all-time high, but is there anything out there outside of Bitcoin that, that you like? And if you say, no, that’s perfectly fine, because I know you are a hundred percent pure a Bitcoin guy.

Dan Held: Yeah. Look, I mean, I along my journey, I tried out a lot of other things. Like, I did some mining of alt coins before, and I’ve traded other alt coins and thought about other alt coins, and even thought about creating an alt coin. I think most Bitcoiners you meet, folks that are just into Bitcoin, they didn’t, they didn’t just land on like, “I’m just going to do Bitcoin.” They typically tried a lot of other things. I tried a lot of other things. And then, they’re like, “You know what? There’s reasons why Bitcoin is really good at what it does.” Blockchain technology was built to first build Bitcoin and blockchain technology is not a general purpose tool. It can’t be kind of, we can’t just take out this or that. If you take out one element, you sort of disrupt the entirety of how it works.

Dan Held: And that’s where, with Bitcoin, Bitcoin solves the problem of trust with money, very elegantly. And when you try to repurpose it for other things, it’s a really tricky operation because the design surface area is very narrow. I am always a fan of new, innovative ideas. So, I encourage I’m very excited to see people try different things they’re free to, but for me and what I like, for me, I’ve been around eight years in crypto, I’ve seen 10,000 cryptocurrencies come and go. Yeah, I’ve seen 10,000 come and go. And so for me, even if I wasn’t really into, like… Let’s say I was agnostic, and I didn’t really like Bitcoin for its future of, you know, I think solving the trust, the problem of trust with governments, which I think is essential for human freedom, let’s say it didn’t care about that.

Dan Held: And I was just like a trader Bitcoin’s return per unit of risk is still the most phenomenal asset in the space. Can you pick another alt coin that will outperform Bitcoin certainly possible, but many don’t. In Bitcoin, the whole world is waking up to Bitcoin’s value and why Bitcoin is gold 2.0, and I think it would be kind of crazy to miss out on that moment to chase potentially higher gains somewhere else. So, again, fully supportive of people, trading what they want and, and people creating what they want and trying out new things just on a personal level.

Dan Held: Like, that’s how I think about it from a purely economic perspective of return per unit of risk of Bitcoin is, is the best in the space. And you know, also I’ve got a very emotional component where I do believe Bitcoin is our, our greatest chance at freedom. And, I think that Bitcoin starts a movement where if the states, if we remove power of money from states, then that changes everything else. All the other things start to flow down where we can start to challenge every other part of control over our lives. So for me, it’s a very emotional sort of, I guess you could say like freedom, patriotic, like a freedom fighter sort of perspective.

Frank Curzio: So, that leads to this question, which is going to be the easiest, which means it’s going to be the hardest. So, do you still own most of your Bitcoin? Have you taken profits in it? And how big do you think this could get? Do you see Bitcoin going much, much higher from here? Or do you say, a hundred thousand definitely in reach, or is it again, it’s always hard to, to discuss prices, but I’m just curious to see if you know how bullish you are, even though, if thesis has been playing out perfectly.

Dan Held: Yeah. I mean, I would say, look, no one wants a perfect holder in the beginning, that traded back and forth, but I haven’t really disposed of any Bitcoin in a long, long time. My original investment thesis was that Bitcoin is gold 2.0 at a 1.1 trillion market cap. Bitcoin is just now barely touching upon that premise, gold is worth 10 trillion and that’s just one store value asset. So, and Bitcoin has far superior traits as a, as a money or a store value asset. For example, no one can audit the supply of gold. With my home computer, I can audit every… The entire supply of Bitcoin instantaneously. That sort of assurance and transparency makes Bitcoin, I think, incredibly more valuable than gold. So, am I… Do I think the coin has a lot more upside? Absolutely. We, we are just now seeing institutions dip their toe in, you know, ownership of, of Bitcoin in the United States is like five to 10%.

Dan Held: It’s still very small with COVID, money printer whimper at a rate that I don’t think anyone expected, you know, Bitcoin as an antidote to poor central banking policy, especially money printing on unfettered money printing. So, Bitcoin has never been in a better moment to own it. This is the moment that you want protection from inflation. This is a moment whereas institutions buy it, and as it’s being legitimized, more people develop trust in it. Therefore they park more value in it and then the price goes higher. So, I’m holding. I’m holding. I don’t think things have even gotten exciting yet. Bitcoin’s at $63,000 a… Bitcoin at this moment. I’ve, I mean, I’ve been huddling since it was $10 a Bitcoin and that’s great. And I don’t even think things have gotten crazy, I mean, in this cycle, I would fully expect us to go from anywhere between, you know, $200,000 a Bitcoin to a million dollars of Bitcoin.

Dan Held: It depends on how intense it is, but certainly this time is different. This time is very different than the other cycles, which were during a macro bull run. You know, the markets were relatively, relatively good when Bitcoin was, nothing, no nothing was breaking no one was scared when Bitcoin was growing during from 2000, post-2008 through to 2020, you know, and then COVID hit and all of a sudden people go, wait a second. You know, this Bitcoin thing kind of makes sense. In these previous market cycles, which was all retail, speculating on Bitcoin and the infrastructure was shaky and there wasn’t, there weren’t even options. There’s just spot trading their spot and futures trading and options trading just became popular like a year ago. So, Bitcoin is very early in its adoption and very early and it’s institutionalization. So, I couldn’t be more bullish on Bitcoin, but I am the Bitcoin bull. So, I don’t think that’s too big of a surprise there.

Frank Curzio: No, no big surprise there. And you’ve been right all along. So congrats on that. And definitely, you know, worth it for you being so early, but let let’s transition here because you have a great newsletter. It’s a weekly newsletter called the Dan Held Report, where it seems… It’s more about educating the masses about Bitcoin its future potential. Could you talk a little bit about that? And if somebody wants to sign up for it, because I think you have a, you know, 170,000 people there, these followers on your Twitter, but how can people find it? How could they sign up? And maybe talk a little bit about that newsletter.

Dan Held: Yeah. Well, thanks for the thanks for bringing it up. The Held Report is a weekly newsletter that I put out to paid subscribers. I walked through different topics in Bitcoin, for example, this last week I covered Crypto IPO’s. So what, what happened what was happening with the Coinbase IPO? What does that mean for the rest of Crypto companies and what does that mean for Bitcoin? So that’s an example of a topic that I’d write about or can governments kill Bitcoin? You know, I wrote an article about how could a government kill Bitcoin and how can the quaint defend against that.

Dan Held: And so, yeah, it’s essentially a weekly report where if you want to know, if you want to know the intimate deal details of how Bitcoin works and have it explained simply to you, this is the newsletter for you. I’ve been in the space eight years, as mentioned before, as Frank mentioned, before fortune five crypto companies sold to. I’ve seen a lot of come and go. And so, this is sort of my, my place to give you my intimate thoughts, and I’m pretty forward with how I feel. So, I give you kind of a very forward opinion about how I feel about different topics in Bitcoin.

Frank Curzio: And how could they find that as a website or…?

Dan Held: Yeah, try it, just Google Dan Held or the, The Held Report. And it’ll be the number one search result. And then, if you want more of my kind of quick hit thoughts, like if the market starts moving fast, I’m not… Look, I’m not here to give you signals on pricing. I’m a holder. I bought Bitcoin and I’ve held. I don’t day trade it. I have to toddle it. So, you know, I’d recommend following other folks for some of the day-to-day price action. But if you want us, you know, Twitter is where I’m really, really active. If you tweet at me, I might reply. And so I’m Dan Held on Twitter. So it’s @DanHeld.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, that’s great stuff. Well then listen, I want to thank you for coming on with the Coinbase IPO tomorrow, and this is going to be broadcasted tomorrow. It’s just, the timing is great to give us a lot of details on that and the entire industry, right? Everyone’s trying to get more and more familiar with it. Again, you’ve been in it for eight years and benefited tremendously, but I know how busy you are, I appreciate the time. And hopefully, you’ll join us again soon.

Dan Held: Thanks, Frank. And I just want to encourage everyone, you know, spend some time thinking about Bitcoin. If you’re, if you’re skeptical now, just spend a few minutes to read about it a little bit more. You’re not going to get it the first time, but give it some time. You, you owe it to yourself to know more about it. You owe it to yourself to at least learn it. If you learn about it and you still don’t like it, that’s great. But you know, take the time to learn a little bit more because this will be one of the greatest revolutions in history.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And then that makes a lot of sense because you’re seeing even the Ray Dalio’s, and a lot of hedge fund managers, who really hated it probably about three, four years ago, even longer are starting to adopt it, right? I think they’re starting to get a little bit more, and they’ve admitted that, that is great advice. And again, thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, hopefully, you’ll join us again sooner.

Dan Held: Thanks, Frank. Cheers.

Frank Curzio: So amazing stuff from Dan. And yes, you have Ray Dalio, Michael Saylor, talk about Bitcoin at Texas A&M, really big names. I just find it funny that the most important speaker by a mile at that conference in terms of really learning about Bitcoin and its future is Dan, but Ray Dalio is going to draw a lot of attention. Michael Saylor, rightly so, Ray Dalio being at this conference, it’s kind of interesting. He said, “Yeah, we’re going to get into it a little bit or whatever.” But he’s speaking about it. That’s great. But I’m thankful he came on. The timing was absolutely perfect with Coinbase IPO.

Frank Curzio: So, I’m just really happy about that. Really, really great guy. I was talking to him off air, you know, without the interview, before and after, just a really great, down-to-Earth guy. Pretty amazing, buying Bitcoin at 10 and just, again, humble, really cool. And he is just a Bitcoin guy. He doesn’t like a lot of the crap coins out there, using… Even going near them. He’s just like, “I’m Bitcoin; that’s it.”

Frank Curzio: And just the fact that he, instead of saying, pounding your chest, buying all these things, and showing you how great you are, and telling everyone, he’s trying to educate the world on it. That’s pretty freaking cool. When you think about it, I mean, I’ve see the other side of that on Wall Street all the time. So, you know, just… People will make money and a big change and become assholes and think who the hell they are. You know, just, this guy is just seems like the same guy who bought Bitcoin at 10 is the same guy that you talk to now, and I really liked that. I really respect that. But this podcast is about you, not about me. Let me know what you thought at frank@curzioresearch.com. That’s frank@curzioresearch.com. Now, let’s bring in the one and only Daniel Creech, senior research analyst at Curzio Research. Nice to have you back, man, how are you doing?

Daniel Creech: Oh, wonderful. It’s great to be back. I missed it terribly. So, this is a new part. Wednesdays have always been a great time for me during the week, and this podcast brings it out. So, it’s great to be back.

Frank Curzio: That’s awesome. And you know, we usually talk about the big topics. I want to get your thoughts, of course. Right now, it’s Coinbase. And you know, I broke it down completely, as much as I can, for you guys in the intro. But I know you have a lot to say about as well, because this is an IPO that we’re looking at. It’s going to be opening probably around 75 billion, $80 billion valuation. It could be much higher by end of the day, again, we’re doing this mid-day, and you’re going to be listening to this later on. But what are your thoughts on this? I mean, the lock, I talked about it in my opening, is just… The market just boomed in the past four months. The timing couldn’t be more perfect in terms of everything we just… Demand, and you just… Everyone is freaking interested in this thing. It’s everywhere, and every TV station, you know, especially financial media… But I guess, really good stuff by these guys.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it always pays to be a little bit lucky, but I couldn’t be more excited about this because it’s just a neat story. I mean, this thing has been years in the making, just like with your interview with Dan, he’s seen his net worth go up and down 80%, skyrocket drop 80% several times, especially if he’s hold from $10, I can’t even imagine, but seeing them build the infrastructure out, get huge names on the back and help over the counter trades with corporations, from MicroStrategy to Tesla. I think it’s amazing. The only, I hate to be so bullish on this because it just, you’re kind of setting yourself up and you’re going with the tide because the opinion, the majority of opinion is more bullish than bearish on this. Of course, I saw it was going to come out.

Daniel Creech: Listing price was going to be around two, 250, but as of now, it’s still not trading. But the first price is up near 350. The goofy thing there is that you talked about Goldman Sachs, amazing earnings, right? You hit that in the beginning.

Frank Curzio: Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Daniel Creech: Goldman Sachs is 117 billion-ish market cap as of today at 5%. If Coinbase comes out with a higher market cap than that, you can point to silliness there, but hell, welcome to reality. I mean, we live in the craziest world financially right now, in the history of financial record. But I think it’s the, it’s the only game in town. I think it’s an amazing opportunity for a number of reasons. I look at it as a Swiss army knife to compare to Bitcoin or exposure to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And I think it’s an amazing story and good for all the, how many millionaires and billionaires you think are being made through this.

Frank Curzio: It’s incredible, but I mean tons, right? And they’ve been made it ready even before this. You’re talking about Coinbase, it was a $25 billion company four months ago. And it’s deservingly so. We see specs like that inflate valuations by three X, four X in two weeks, just for no reason at all. I mean, these guys’ numbers exploded. I mean, I covered them earlier, which is pretty cool. But I have to say, Daniel, everything that I know about investing for 25 years tells me that, with this thing coming out and everything being absolutely perfect, the market and everything’s surging, how much it’s surging, it just feels like a top and not necessarily a top, but just… Actually, I’m watching this, to Bitcoin at 64,000, it’s now to 62,500, and this is in the past, like, hour and a half. And you know, just so much excitement. I feel like I’m driving home, like a Friday the 13th and black cat runs in front of my car.

Frank Curzio: And then, I walk under a ladder in my house, and a mirror falls and breaks on a floor on the same day. That’s, that’s how I would describe this Coinbase and people getting to grip though. I’ve never… Yeah, I talked about it, and I don’t know… Facebook came out, came out at 50 IPO, and then it went to 39, 38, whatever it did, for them to finally figured out how to monetize. And we all know where it is now. Good for them. But you know that’s coming. I don’t come out more excitement… And Google as well. If we go back, 20 years, whatever, nobody wanted that. Like, they lowered their price from 108 to 85. You know? So, when I look at this company and the excitement and everything, checking off all the boxes.. Yeah, I just, I don’t know if you feel that way. And you know, if we do, we might see a pullback, which is normal for any market. I mean, this is something that has gone straight up, incredible, for the past four months.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. And you make a great point because when we look back in a little bit or, six, eight months and say, “Hey, this was the ringing of the bell,” or “Is this just a number, another buy the rumor, sell the news type, and then reload for a higher bull market?” Again, so what do you get when you buy Coinbase? You get the only exchange on crypto that’s publicly traded right now in the. I saw on Dan’s posting from your interview earlier; Kraken is looking to go public. And why wouldn’t you at this timing to take advantage of that? But right now, it’s basically your Uber without your Lyft. And Uber is traded all-time highs. Lyft, I don’t believe has reached this all-time IPO price yet. It’s still lower than that, but it’s the only game in town. So, you get exposure to cryptocurrencies, which is going to be volatile. Did you see… And its S-1 filing this year’s revenues. Amazing, what did it, 300, some million in profit versus what? A loss last year, that shows you the volatility there. That’s amazing.

Frank Curzio: Yeah, I mean, operating… But I think it was 1 billion of operating profit. But it was a… Yeah, 1.8 billion in sales. Again, that’s for the quarter.

Daniel Creech: You get exposure to the only crypto exchange in town. These are very profitable. You get everything in the future that’s coming. So, what will blockchain be used…? What other financial services will they do? You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of a couple of weeks ago. When you had Zac Prince on; great interview. And I remember being a little bit surprised because it reminded me of the Netflix thing. And Netflix was completely right when their CEO kept saying, “Oh, we love competition. Even…” I was like, “Yes, there’s no way you love competition.” He turned out to be right. Netflix isn’t getting hammered by anybody getting into their space. They’re all competing with Netflix, is that Prince made a great point saying, “Hey, we’re going to get into traditional finance eventually just like traditional finance is getting into Crypto.” That’s okay. That’s an evolution.

Daniel Creech: That’s the maturity of the market. That’s exciting. With Coinbase, you also get exposure to Bitcoin. They hold Bitcoin, couple of hundred million, on their balance sheet. Why wouldn’t they increase that exposure? And why don’t they deserve a premium like everybody else does, Tesla, MicroStrategy, Square, PayPal, etc.? You also get some of the biggest and best investors backing you and behind you. So, what can Coinbase do? They’re going to invest in everything that they see coming down the pipe. Again, I am nervous. I would love to see a little bit of a pullback to give you an opportunity to buy in. But you know, I would buy a little bit of this right now, and then just be along for the ride. Gosh, why don’t you stop me? I sound like a permeable.

Frank Curzio: Well, I can keep providing those… I’m not superstitious at all by the way. But yeah, I think I provided… I mean, keep going. I’m Tesla buy Tesla close to 666, open an umbrella indoors. I keep going with. I love when people are superstitions about everything, especially when it comes to sports. I always obsessed about everything,

Daniel Creech: But real quick, were you ever that way in sports? Do you wear the same socks or anything?

Frank Curzio: No, a lot of people I played with did.

Daniel Creech: I never did, but yeah. Anyway, I like those.

Frank Curzio: It’s pretty big when it comes… Yes. So, I did provide better way to play, Coinbase, which is Silvergate Capital, Voyager Digital, BNB token, again, names that we already have. But from a risk-reward perspective, I truly believe Bitcoin’s going that high. These are much, much smaller market caps and much more growth potential. And you can’t really look at how much they’ve gone up in the past. If you’re saying… If you truly believe that Bitcoin’s going higher. And if you think it’s going to a million, that was awesome. And you know, who am I to say? The guy’s crazy because yeah, he’s been right all along. I like Cathie Wood, you know, she’s been right all along. And people say Tesla, like we talked about that, we debated the Tesla thing.

Frank Curzio: But for me, look, when you add that credibility… Yeah, you get the benefit of the doubt. And this person has been really, really right. And I like the fact he’s not arrogant about it. But, Daniel, I want to bring something up to you, which is very interesting. He owns Bitcoin at 10. And for me, I got the impression that he hasn’t sold it. I cannot tell you how many people I talk to, who own a ton of Bitcoin, that are not selling at all. They’re not selling. They just won’t sell. They won’t take profits in it. I mean, I’ve never, this is, this is like an evolution.

Frank Curzio: This is something that you normally don’t. Usually, you know, you have people getting in, they’re going to sell it. You know, Warren Buffett long-term hold things to 10, 15, 20 years. I mean, nobody does that today. And everything is like, “What’s the quarter? What’s going to happen the next two weeks? Oh my God.” People will create, you always need something to talk about in the media. So, many people I know own a lot. I’m talking about owning more than 5 million plus up to probably 50 million plus, maybe a little more than that. But some people that I know, and even people that we’ve interviewed, none of these guys are selling. Now, you look at GameStop, right? And who was that guy that had the calls on GameStop, right? Whatever it was,

Daniel Creech: The Valuer… Kiddie… Something

Frank Curzio: He didn’t sell them. He never sold them. And until they expire, they made a fortune on them. Again, wherever GameStop is today, who knows, it could be 150 to 300 wherever. But even that group too, I mean, they’re like, no, it’s more of proving a point. There’s more emotion behind investing in Bitcoin and crypto. And I’ve ever seen now you have your traders and everything. But these people are like gold bucks where they’re going to be bullish on it no matter what. And that’s okay, you’ve been right. But I don’t know if you’ve seen the same thing, but I’m seeing that from almost every person I interviewed that owned very, very early, still owns it, even up here. Like, it would be, “Wow, just take a little bit off.” Or, you know, some of it… No, they’re like, “Nope, I’m never going to sell this thing,” which is different right? Which definitely different.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. The fun thing for me is that there’s nothing new under the sun. So emotionally, you’re going to have the same people… I love your reference on gold bugs because why wouldn’t you have the same type of people with Bitcoin or stocks or real estate? I mean, some people are millionaires in real estate, and will tell you the entire stock market’s a scam, and for suckers only, and they don’t need it. And who’s to tell them that they’re wrong if they’re very successful over here doing real estate? You don’t need stocks. You don’t need real estate. You don’t need one or the other to become wealthy. I think that’s awesome. And from a macro perspective, so it doesn’t shock me that you have those people that are like, “Hey, Bitcoin is the new gold. Gold is worthless. Paper money is worthless. Keep everything in Bitcoin. Blah, blah, blah.” That’s fine.

Daniel Creech: The interesting thing about not selling is because… I don’t know, and I’m not speaking for these people, I don’t know why they originally bought it. But from the interview with Dan, the thesis has not changed. So, the old cliché: No, it’s easy to say that when Bitcoin is near an all-time high. If Bitcoin drops to 15,000 or 5,000 again, you’re going to feel like an idiot because you had… You watched these paper assets in flight, and now the flight… That’s just part of investing in emotions. But if the thesis doesn’t change, Frank, why would you sell? So, if you really believe that this is going to be a currency or a store of value, or it’s going to separate the power between governments and money, which, hey, I am your biggest fan on that. That ain’t happening, all right? Let’s get that out of the way right now. I hope it does, but that ain’t going to happen in our lifetime. So, you got to give them credit. If that thesis doesn’t change, why would you sell?

Daniel Creech: I find it, he’s got to have taken some off the table, don’t you think? I mean, anybody has got shit ton of that.

Frank Curzio: I could imagine.

Daniel Creech: But I know he has the majority.

Daniel Creech: The majority is like, you know, even up here, where you see this thing, and plus, you went into the market that went to 19 to 3000.

Frank Curzio: Holy cow.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: Holy cow.

Daniel Creech: Absolutely.

Frank Curzio: I’ll tell you, when 19,000 came down, I would think… Hey, at 15,000, I’m like, okay, I’m going to sell all of it this time.

Daniel Creech: And on top of that, Binance, you mentioned them. CZ, the co-founder and CEO of Binance, I believe I just read this week that he keeps 90… I don’t want to exaggerate, but it’s 80% to 90% of his net worth in crypto. I don’t know if that’s all BNB. I’m sure that’s spread around to different coins, but…

Frank Curzio: Really into this.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: Yeah, I think that’s amazing. It’s easy to say up here. But hey, if your thesis doesn’t change, personally… Throw out any number you want, if people aren’t selling, how does it not go to six figures? High numbers get a lot easier to reach if you have nobody willing to sell.

Frank Curzio: And not just not willing to sell, but you see more and more companies, institutions… I mean, PayPal was a huge announcement. We have 26 million merchants that are going to be able to pay. I mean, this is becoming a currency now. I mean, you could be able to use it to pay for different things.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: We’re far off from it to be mainstream and go into a deli and buy a soda with it or whatever, or milk.

Daniel Creech: But here’s a fun thing: Crypterium. Crypterium offers a Visa-like debit credit card that you can use on regular purchases and get cash back in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. That’s a huge deal.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: Instead of getting credit card points, why not get crypto points? Yeah. And then you can transfer that over. I mean, heck, it all adds up. So, it’s just an interim… I mean, it’s just a great evolution of it…

Frank Curzio: So, you talk about Visa, Square, PayPal… I mean, all of these guys understand how big this market is and that, that is the future. And we have a young generation that is all in on this, and now, you’ve seen institutions start going all in on it. But Coinbase really opened up the door here. Hopefully, the US plays catch up, because they’ve been way… I mean, hopefully, they just catch it. They’ve been way behind the curve on everything. It’s been really crazy.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: But yeah, guys. A lot of Coinbase… That is the biggest story within crypto, and I wanted to provide more ideas here. But Dan, I wanted to turn the page to very big news today, which hurt stocks in general, but they kind of came back a little bit. J&J, the vaccine. They saw… How many people? Whether there was six or seven of them got blood clots out of seven million, and they’ve removed it. They pulled it off the market for now, just to do more studies on it. And it’s interesting because this is a trend that I follow all the time. And again, I’m putting into stock perspective as well. But I’m going to tell you a little story here, which Daniel knows. I’m going to bring everyone in here.

Frank Curzio: So, I had COVID already with my family, which you all know. I broadcasted that, when I had it. And did a podcast about it, when I had it. And we were lucky; we got mild symptoms. It was awesome. I travel internationally, right? So, I know that Europe, Canada, most places, they’re going to require you to have a passport. They’re going to freaking require you to have a vaccine passport. So, I’m like, you know what? All right, I’ll get the vaccine. And I had plans to get it on Friday. And I had COVID already, right? And I said yeah, I’ll get it. Whatever.

Frank Curzio: And this J&J thing really scared the hell out of me. And you could say, “Frank, it’s seven people. It’s seven people out of seven million. You got a better chance of almost getting struck by lightning or whatever.” But what I want to find out about this test before I do anything, Daniel… And this takes 15 minutes, guys, to figure it out. 15 minutes. The fact they’re not reporting… By the way, they didn’t pull it because of seven people. It’s a lot more than seven people. I’m not being a conspiracy theorist, but you don’t pull a drug at seven people when you have seven million.

Frank Curzio: The reason why they pulled it is because AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca and J&J are both DNA-based, right? Those are different from the Pfizer and Moderna. They pulled AstraZeneca because it was killing people. It killed people, right? And again, that company was… To me, they’re a shady company. I’ve warned you about them. Even the results that they publish, it just seemed like they were trying to get into a market very, very late and just doing it as quick as they can. So, that’s why they’re like, holy cow. Maybe we need to pull this because we saw what happened with AstraZeneca, where J&J, I don’t think killed anybody yet. What I want to find out, what takes 15 minutes… And why don’t we know this? I want to know if those seven people had COVID first and recovered from COVID and then got the vaccine, because that’s important. Because you have blood clots. And when you have antibodies already and you’re injecting even more, that’s when your system will get really, really fucked up.

Frank Curzio: I talked to a lot of doctors about it, it’s definitely true. And there’s no studies on it, right? Do you really need this, if you got it? I don’t know. We don’t know. For me, I’m like, well, I’m going to travel or whatever. But that makes me nervous that, if I have lots of antibodies because I had it already, and now I’m going to get it. That’s the reason why. I know the numbers. I know it’s just seven people and I get it, but we need more studies out there. And then Daniel, we just saw, I mean, Trudeau. I feel bad. There might be people in Canada who believe in Trudeau, but it’s so amazing.

Frank Curzio: That guy’s the biggest fricking idiot I’ve ever seen. He just went on TV and he was basically telling everyone the vaccine doesn’t work. The vaccine doesn’t work and look at Europe and why are cases spreading so much. And they’re still in lockdown, that’s what we need to do. Lockdown everything. Keep it locked down. So yeah, at the end of the day, I might not be traveling to Canada for a very long time, especially if I don’t get the vaccine and have that passport because they’d probably arrest me on the spot.

Frank Curzio: But yeah, that’s how I felt about. But I thought that was very big news today because I know there’s a lot of people that feel the same way I do, that after this came out and the people who got it, were talking about it, tons of people who were affected by COVID, who are now okay, should we get this vaccine or not? And I can’t find any studies, doctors or anything that are accurate. I don’t care what side you’re on. I know this is 100% politicized by both sides, but I’d like to know just some studies and see if I need to get this.

Daniel Creech: Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I dislike the pharmaceutical industry in general, because when we’re talking about other stocks, Coinbase, whatever, the percentages, the data points, it’s money. People are losing money or an investment or whatever. Here, it’s lives. And that just sucks. And it’s just the way it is, and it’s a bummer. So, let me ask you, Frank, is the government following the science on this? And what I mean by that is, six out of 6.8 million. And the other lawsuit coming here is, they’re all women, which means-

Frank Curzio: They’re all women, yeah.

Daniel Creech: This day and age, gender is a big deal right now. Okay, people?

Frank Curzio: Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Creech: Let’s be careful. I’ll get to that in a minute. But is your typical plan or rollout… Do you always pull drugs if you have this percentage? And whatever six is on 6.8 million, is not a big percentage.

Frank Curzio: No.

Daniel Creech: Again, we’re dealing with people here. One death is awful, one is in critical condition. I’m not saying that’s okay. My point is, is that there’s a lot of memes yesterday on the internet about birth control. So, Web MD says… In one article on Web MD, I’m not saying it’s gospel, but was pointing to, you can have 0.3 to 0.9, 1% chance of blood clots. But you have more of a chance of, before or after pregnancy, to have blood clots than you do on birth control according to this one. Now, if that’s the case, everybody went and ran with it and made some funny memes about how the vaccine is safer than the pill birth control. Now, they’re not going to pull that, so where does the science stop? And I’m with you, is it just six people? Is it a lot more? I don’t know.

Daniel Creech: But the whole thing, it’s already politicized. And you know that because you’re already seeing it across Fox News, CNN, MSNBC. You’re already seeing headlines about how, hey, we don’t want this to affect people that are waiting to get the vaccine like you, Frank. We don’t want you to get more skeptical because of this. Well, how in the hell are you not going to make people more skeptical, if you’re pulling something on such a small percentages? And people are going to start questioning. To think that this would go out smoothly with the government running, is silly from the first place. I’m not putting that on you. But the biggest thing here is, why you’re getting it, Frank. And that’s scary, because you’re not going to be allowed to travel anymore. And this is something worth fighting for.

Daniel Creech: So, I have to tip my cap to the Biden administration because they came out… Did you know that they have vaccine digital passports or they’re going to do some passports in California and Orange County as a test?

Frank Curzio: Oh, no, but-

Daniel Creech: And they’re doing it for peace of mind, which is just a nice way of saying that it’s complete BS and all this is irrelevant and we’re just doing it for show. But thank goodness, because people were starting to push back. You actually have representatives, mostly Republicans, but Andy Biggs from Arizona introduced legislation to ban federal agencies from future insurance of any standardization document for COVID vaccines. Our guy here, DeSantis, is adamant about making pass… They’re trying to pass laws to say, you can’t do this. And I hope they do because, explain to me Frank, how you’re not allowed to go to a different country or a different state? Or why stop there? A certain store or participate in anything, if you don’t have this vaccine?

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: So, that’s the really scary thing that everybody really needs to pay attention to. And I was glad to see the Biden administration, the press secretary, Jen Psaki… I might be butchering that, said that, “Hey, the government is not now nor will be supporting any system that requires Americans to carry a credential to prove their vaccination.” Now, I don’t have a lot of faith in that, but let’s remember this timestamp and let’s see how this ages, Frank, because freedom is the only thing worth fighting for like that. And this is a scary politicized situation.

Frank Curzio: To me, I said this earlier, it takes 15 minutes to call all these people and just ask them. And say, “Oh, just go to the doctors or whatever.” J&J, with the seven women. And just ask them, “Hey, did you have the virus already?” And I could tell you, if all of them had the virus, they’re not going to report that. There’s no way that they report that because that means there’s going to be millions, if not tens of millions of people, that are not going to get the vaccine.

Daniel Creech: Right.

Frank Curzio: And they don’t even care if it’s different, where that’s DNA-based and you have different vaccine, totally different immune response with Moderna and Pfizer. But why don’t we have this information? I mean, that’s relevant to me. It’s relevant to my family. When I talk about COVID, it’s not being politicized. It’s me trying to help you out and just share my information that I’m getting from unbiased sources with you, which includes tons of doctors that listen to this, who most of them, I would say more than 90%, always say, “Just don’t mention my name, that I said this.” And they’ll give me information. I’m like, you got to be kidding me. This is true. They’re like, “Yeah.” But this is really incredible, because we really need to find that out.

Frank Curzio: So for me, I canceled… And again, it’s seven out of seven million people. I’m crazy for canceling. But for me, when I look… I just want to see that. I want to see those studies. And the fact that they’re not giving you that information, the fact that we’re seeing so much of the science has been so fricking wrong. The six foot, I mean… This isn’t science. This is just, hey, this makes sense. So, let’s do it, and let’s force it on you. And people are sick of it. I mean, how many people are attacking Texas right now? Texas, in terms of COVID cases, is in the bottom 10% of states. Yet, they removed their mass mandate. Well, why is that?

Frank Curzio: Now, we’re seeing that you can’t get COVID from surfaces. Do you know what that means? You can’t get it, so it’s not as… You know what that means? The tens of billions of dollars that are spent on everybody spraying and going crazy. Everything. I went to Disney, every other ride, every other turn, they spray everything. The rollercoaster, whatever, every place. Getting food, they spray the whole thing. When you were checking out at any other place, all that. Really, you’re telling us now that you can’t contract it, it doesn’t live on surfaces?

Frank Curzio: So, just tell us what it is. Be honest with us. Because I could tell you, the leader of the CDC right now, she’s a complete freaking idiot. Oh my God. I mean, it doesn’t get more political than that. And she’s just like, “We should lockdown again.” And I’m like, what? Are you crazy? These doctors are not economists. They don’t understand… They don’t study the effects. We have the studies out of kids not going to school, how it’s crushing them. I saw that firsthand with my daughter, when I was studying for the test to get into bowls. I mean, there was shit I thought she should know. She didn’t, because you’re taking off almost a full year.

Frank Curzio: Think about it, right? You’re learning all these new technologies because you got to stay at home. All these new computer programs, you’re not really paying attention. It’s completely a distraction. And then I’m not even talking about people in general, from staying home, the studies of depression and suicide. And yeah, it’s crazy. We know this. So, there’s no perfect solution where, okay, nobody has COVID. Everyone’s going to be fine and everybody’s going to be happy on both sides, right? There’s a give and take. But when you look at what lockdowns have done to this country and the impact it had on so many people, it’s going to come out that it’s going to be worse than the impact on COVID. And it is. It’s going to be worse than the 500 million people or 500,000 people who have unfortunately passed from this. But you’re going to see this, and how it impacts, and how it impacted… And hopefully, we get these studies out. I just want more transparency.

Frank Curzio: But putting this in investment terms, guys, because I talk about COVID a lot, is J&J. I got to be honest with you, Dan. I love J&J. Right away, they always do the right thing. The right thing with the Tylenol thing, whatever 20, 30 years ago. I mean, they always pull stuff right away. That’s what they do, that you’re supposed to do. I know it was FDA… But J&J are just such an amazing company, is probably a buy on this. I’m sure they’ll figure it out. But I’d like to just see the result. Could you let me know if those six women… We know the age group of them, right? I think it’s 25 to 48, I think. In that range. Okay. We know the age group, but how come you just can’t tell me? Oh, three of them did, four of them did. Do you notice how they’re not telling… Why not tell us that? That’s important, because then there’s going to be doubt about the vaccine, and who knows? Hopefully, everything’s okay, and nobody’s going to have blood clots or see any impact from it.

Frank Curzio: But to me, common sense… And even from the doctors I talked to, if you have the antibodies and you’re injecting even more of that into your body, it’s got to mess up your system, your immune system somehow. It’s got to. It can’t be a good thing for you. And is it worth it? Well, it’s worth it if it works, but we don’t know. I don’t know if I’m going to get COVID again. I don’t think so. Just like you’re not going to get chickenpox again. A few people do.

Daniel Creech: Yeah.

Frank Curzio: But that’s what the studies are. And to me, J&J… AstraZeneca, I do not like that company at all. You see Moderna is probably a great buy in this. And Pfizer, they’re going to pick up the difference. They have plenty of this, even though they probably don’t make that much money on these vaccines from the government. But those stocks are being inflated and those are players on here.

Daniel Creech: Hey, I have a solution to all of this, Frank.

Frank Curzio: Okay, let me hear it.

Daniel Creech: Okay. So everybody that’s in my… If you’re worried about getting the vaccine, if you’re in my camp and you’re not planning on getting the vaccine, and you’re really not going to get the vaccine, especially when they tell you, you can’t fly or go anywhere. If that’s the case, we’ll deal with that when we have to cross that bridge. What happened to freedom of choice, Frank? We have freedom of choice in all kinds of things. Hot topic like abortion. Nobody wants to argue about that freedom of choice. Today we have gender choice. So, if you’re in my camp and you’re not wanting to get the vaccine, I have an easy solution, Frank. Guess what? I am going to identify as a vaccinated person, therefore I can go anywhere. So make all your rules, whatever, I’ll just say, “No, no. I identify as a vaccinated person.” I don’t need any proof. I just got it.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: We’ll see how far that goes.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: Just like Delta, getting on a plane without my ID, even though they’re upset. And for you people out there that may be upset that I’m making fun, hysterically, of politics, you can’t avoid politics. You can’t invest without paying attention to politics. And look no further to the Georgia law and Delta and the MLB moving out for political reasons, and all that kind of stuff. Delta, the same company that makes you require to show your ID to get on one of their airplanes, thinks it’s bad to have an ID to vote. If that doesn’t tell you how freaking stupid corporate America can get, nothing else will, and you can identify as whatever you’d like to as well. But that’s why you have to take this with a smile and navigate this as much as you can. Because if you don’t learn to laugh at it, you’ll go nuts and it’ll be worse than anything else.

Frank Curzio: I wonder if I get on a flight and I show my license and they say that I need to show them the passport. And I say, no. And they say, “Well, you can’t get on a flight.” Can I say that, that’s racism?

Daniel Creech: Yeah, absolutely.

Frank Curzio: That’s racism.

Daniel Creech: Keyword there is identify. Just like if you get in a gunfight, you’ve got to say I was fearing for my life. That’s what they told me in business law class.

Frank Curzio: Yeah.

Daniel Creech: It’s all about what you say, Frank.

Frank Curzio: I mean, it’s just funny when you look at some things, yes. And somethings, no. But again, let’s not… This is when we get the most emails. Dan, you’ve got to start giving me your email address, so they don’t come to.

Daniel Creech: Daniel@curzioresearch.com.

Frank Curzio: Daniel-

Daniel Creech: Daniel@curzioresearch.com. Name and town. Name and town.

Frank Curzio: That’s D-A-N-I-E-L at Curzio. I want to make sure. I can’t wait. I’m going to read all those emails when they come in.

Daniel Creech: I like it.

Frank Curzio: They always come to me, “Daniel is right-wing! He doesn’t know.” Anyway, it’s kind of funny. But I want to go over one last thing here really quick, is Goldman Sachs. Guys, if you didn’t see those results, they were pretty insane. I just want to see, which I’m pulling up on my site right now, where Goldman Sachs is. Which, I’m expecting it to be down, like it always is when they report great earnings. But then the stock pretty much goes… No. Actually, it’s up to 340, which is great news for our Curzio Research Advisory subscribers who own this at 210, I think. 211. And this is easily going to 400. It should actually go to 500 based on these results.

Frank Curzio: But Dan, I have the results here. And guys, I can share my screen with you here, if you’re watching on YouTube here. Again, a lot of you do listen to Wall Street Unplugged, but we do iTunes and other sources, even through our website. But for YouTube, we’re videotaping this. We have all the technology. It’s really, really cool. So you get to see my ugly face and Daniel’s pretty face. But I’m showing a Goldman Sachs report, and this is from Evercore. And they actually say, it’s titled, “That’s Not a Typo.”

Daniel Creech: Yeah. Well, you have to say something silly like that because-

Frank Curzio: So for Q1… I mean, if you thought Coinbase numbers were good, $18 and 60 cents earnings. The estimates were for around nine, 9.50-ish, which is… So, you’re looking at equity investments gains 3.1 billion, which that’s trading revenue, is up 47%. Investment banking up 73%. Revenues more than doubled, expenses up, so they’re marketing even more. But equities is up 68%. I baking revenue is up 73%. Asset management rose to 4.6 billion versus last year’s quarter decline of 96 million. Just across the board. I mean, there’s not a thing that you could highlight that you could say, oh.

Frank Curzio: I mean, corporate lending declined a little bit. Total loan losses declined 5% year over year. Lower corporate loans. But other than that, this is a sick, crazy quarter. Which again, if you’re Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, I get it. A lot of people hate them. They think they’re an evil empire. I get it. I understand. But nobody knows how to make money better than these guys. And the key to these companies making money, it’s volatility, right? You look at volatility and when the markets are volatile, that’s when they make the most money and liquidity. And we have more liquidity to market than ever, with 10 and a half trillion injected and another 2.3 coming probably for infrastructure. I know 10% is for infrastructure, but still. It’s going to be injected to people somehow and of course, to the politicians. But these numbers are just, I mean, staggering, right?

Daniel Creech: Yeah. The revenue growth, the investment banking and of course the SPACs, they’re going frenzy. They’re probably going to slow down. What I really took away from this is, the CEO, Dave… Is it David? Why am I second guessing? I think it’s David Solomon. I know it’s Solomon. DJ. Anyway. Both him and Jamie Diamond from JP Morgan, who also put up amazing numbers. I don’t know if you saw those, Frank. But JP Morgan knocked it out of the park as well. Both talked about how great and powerful the economic recovery is. Why it’s going to continue and why consumer spending will continue. And they’re positive on that. So while they don’t expect the SPACs to continue at the rate they are, they still have record backlog. I believe JP Morgan had a record backlog too. And backlog just means business in the pipeline that you’re going to cash in on some point in the future, usually between 12 months, in the next 12 months. Those are record highs.

Daniel Creech: Goldman Sachs sees client activity extraordinarily high. Everybody’s still bullish. What does that mean? That means that, if you think in terms of the river analogy, all this money and stimulus being dumped into the river at the top, is going to flow through the economy. And it’s just going to take some time, so this story is nowhere near over. Again, not to be blindly bullish, you’re going to have separation. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan knocked it out of the park. Morgan Stanley continues to be the worst bank on wall street.

Daniel Creech: I mean, if you’re hanging out with your buddies and you say, “Hey, where do you work?” You do not want to say Morgan Stanley right now, because you’re going to get made fun of, and they deserve it. They’re being silly. They got a lot of issues too. Goldman knows how to be the biggest crooks. I don’t mean crook as financially crooked or jail crooked. I just mean, playing the game better than anybody else. So, the takeaway there is, both are the biggest, most successful banks in what they do. The CEOs think the economy is going to continue hotter. And that means that we have a lot more opportunity in the bull market as investors.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. And one quick note here, because breaking down the financials. And I never use return equity as a measure to buy a stock amount of life. I mean, it’s just something that you see that, that’s a good metric. For me, I’ve never bought or sold the stock.

Daniel Creech: This isn’t a typo either, what you’re about to say, because this is hilarious.

Frank Curzio: Return on equity for the quarter, was 31%. For 2020, it was 11%. Just the numbers… Listen, if you want things done, you’re going to pay a high price, you’re going to pay high fees, but you get it done, right? Because they’re the best, they know how to make money and they service their clients. Just really, really great stuff. I’m glad we got into that stock early, but really, really cool. So Daniel, covered a lot of topics today. Really appreciate you coming back. Glad to have you back, buddy. And yeah, I’ll see you next week, all right?

Daniel Creech: All right. See everybody next week. Take care. Cheers.

Frank Curzio: All right guys. So listen, we talked a lot about crypto. I’m getting huge demand for our Crypto Intelligence newsletter, so I kept it open just a little bit longer at a 50% discount. I know I’m probably crazy for doing that since we have, I want to say two 20X… Or now it’s three 20X winners and two 30X plus winners. Just so many different… I’m hoping that we get a pullback in this market. But I talked about Silvergate capital as being a great play, which is a stock you could buy. And I also talked about Voyager Digital. Guys, another stock that’s probably the Goldman Sachs in this industry… And it has gone up, but it’s still a little bit below our biopsy price right now. It has gone up. We’ve been adding to it. We usually have a full position at 6% and we added that full 6% now, and it’s gone up considerably. But this is the name of a very small market cap that has partnered with Goldman Sachs, has partnered with Morgan Stanley. These guys, the investment I’ve done, the research base is incredible.

Frank Curzio: In the crypto space, these guys are invested in so… Very, very early stage, in so many crypto companies that have billion dollar valuations now. These guys are amazing. And considered that they have a very, very low market cap, it’s something I’m excited about. So if you’re interested in learning more about crypto, where we explain everything to you, you want to subscribe and go to or website, curzioresearch.com. It’s a 50% discount. Again, I don’t want to push it. Just getting a lot of questions on it. If you want to buy it, buy it. We sell financial newsletters, that’s how we make money. And we’ve made people a lot, a lot of money. And I think this trend is definitely going to continue.

Frank Curzio: And I hope we see a pullback, which is going to open a door for more ideas. But more importantly is, when I look at Exodus coming out, I mean it’s a name that we’re very familiar with. A lot of the names are coming out and they’re coming to us, which is really cool. And we’re getting great context, great, great ways to invest in these things. And that’s going to continue because of credibility that we have in this space. That’s going to open up to a lot of new ideas. And I’m not just talking about those of you who need to be in a credit investor. Because what Exodus did, was a Reg A offering. And the fact that they expanded that, where you could raise more money to Reg offering than ever, it means that any investor or almost any investor can now invest in these things. And we’re going to have access to a lot of these things early stage. So, we’re going to close this pretty soon. I’ve opened it up a little bit longer, because we’re getting lots of demand and I’m getting a lot of questions about it.

Frank Curzio: If you’re interested, fine. Again, Crypto Intelligence is doing very well right now. I’m expecting to have lots more really, really cool ideas coming out. Very excited about it. And you could find that offer… The only place you’ll find it, is on our website. Unless you want to email us, we might send you something. And that’s just a banner on curzioresearch.com. So guys, covered a lot. Hopefully we didn’t bore you. We don’t want to make this a crypto podcast or anything, but this is the theme. And my job is to try to bring ideas that are going to make you money. And I’m trying to do that, especially through crypto and industry, that we are very, very engulfed in.

Frank Curzio: Yeah. So hopefully you enjoyed the podcast. And again, questions, comments, feel free to reach out to me anytime, guys, frank@curzioresearch.com. Positive, negative feedback. Again, this is about you, not about me. I like that criticism, that constructive criticism. You do what your clients want and what they like, and that’s how you build a brand and build a business. And that’s why we’ve been successful so far and we’re growing and things are really, really cool. So, I just want to say thank you so much for all the listeners out there. I love you guys. And I’ll see you in seven days. Take care.

Announcer: Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember, it’s your money and your responsibility.